3/30/2024
Steel Block Bandits
VISION WHEEL BANDITS READY FOR SEASON FOUR
FAYETTEVILLE, NC – Derick Quade would be sporting an ear-to-ear smile if his 2024 season produced the same result as ’23.
Every other driver who will chase the Vision Wheel Steel Block Bandits championship wants to be in shoes.
Their collective quest begins Saturday night, March 30, with the 2024 season opener at Fayetteville Motor Speedway. A first-place payout of $5,000 awaits the driver who conquers the high-banked, 3/8ths-mile dirt oval.
The Bandits tour is kicking off its fourth season, and its first with Vision Wheel of Decatur, Ala. The circuit will once again be comprised of 16 races, covering tracks from eastern Virginia all the way to eastern Alabama.
Quade, of Mechanicsville, Md., held the top spot in the Bandits’ points standings almost from start to finish, but couldn’t lock up the crown until the season finale at Fayetteville.
A third-place finish at Halifax County (NC) Speedway got his season off to a good start, and he jumped to the top at the next event with a sixth-place showing on the dirt at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway.
Quade added a runner-up finish at Sumter, S.C., and a third at Elizabeth City, N.C., before he notched his first career Bandits victory. That came July 29 at Hagerstown (Md.) Speedway, which attracted a series-record 53 entries. Quade led all 50 laps and cruised to a 1.3-second victory.
When the tour concluded at Fayetteville in October, Quade had banked enough points to win the championship by 28 points over Tyler Bare of Rockbridge Baths, Va. Robbie Emory of Milton, Del., finished 44 points behind Quade, who followed Dustin Mitchell (2022) and Russell Erwin (2021) as a Steel Block Bandits champion. Quade finished third in the standings in each of the series’ first two seasons.
Quade has the distinction of having competed in all 36 Bandits races to date. Now 40, Quade has been racing for half his life, starting in Street Stocks at Potomac Speedway in La Plata, Md., just five minutes from home.
“The payouts and the competition,” Quade said of why he’s a Bandits loyalist. “I just like to go where there are good car counts, good competition and the chance for a good payout. We love going to different tracks rather than racing one or two places. We like to get out and travel.”
Hagerstown wasn’t the scene of Quade’s lone victory in 2023. He won at Potomac in Limited competition in May, August and October, and he used the same car to capture the 30-lap Huey Wilcoxon Memorial race for super late models Sept. 3.
Quade achieved all of those wins in his No. 74 Bandits car, a 2020 Longhorn chassis that was at first a puzzle to solve.
“I had a Black Diamond before that and had a lot of success with it, then got the Longhorn and struggled,” he said. “It took us two years before we figured (the Longhorn) out and got good with it. … One car likes way different things than the other car. I’m not an engineer, I can’t explain it all to you. We’re still getting better. The longer we’ve run it, the better we’ve gotten it.”
The experience gained in prepping the car has come in handy given the Bandits’ challenging road schedule. The owner of Quade Flooring Inc. had to cover fewer miles when the series made its debut in 2021, but this year’s slate includes trips to Maryville, Tenn., and Gaffney, S.C., in addition to a 1,300-mile round-trip jaunt – if Quade opts to make it – from Mechanicsville to Talladega Short Track in Eastaboga, Ala.
“The competition is different wherever we go, and the race tracks are so much different,” Quade said. “You show up at some of these tracks and all the local guys are good. You only know what you’ve seen online or on social media. When you don’t have experience racing with them, you drive them the way you want to be driven – that’s how we try to go.”
Winners of the previous Bandits races at Fayetteville Motor Speedway are Michael Batten and Tyler Bare.
#WelcomeToTheShow
#americasmostwanted
#visionwheel
#ChallengeIssued
Article Media
